There’s a reason quality alcohols come in cans, brown bottles and have very little to no air in the packaging. Light and oxygen.
Light and oxygen degrade the freshness of our products. 2020 should be the year of no more clear glass bottles for cannabis. We should be packaging our cannabis in brown glass, or even better, completely opaque. This is because light degrades all the chemical compounds in the plant, so the darker the glass, the closer the flavor and experience will be, according to the growers finished cure.
As far as oxygen, I haven’t seen a great way to reduce the amount of air inside a package of flower without crushing the flowers. In this regard, concentrates are much easier to control, and there is room for innovation for flower. Filling a container completely with concentrate that is not liquid will usually result in a dried top layer that seals in the rest of the concentrate and keeps it separate from any air in the jar, however little there is. This will not work with liquid as any air will mix into the liquid over time, causing oxidization.
Traditional hash in the form of a temple ball handles all of this perfectly, and it doesn’t need to be in a jar at all. A nice ball of hash is self preserving, the oils on the outside of the ball form a protective layer for the rest of the ball so you can keep it for months and even years while retaining the terpenes and cannabinoids in a much more stable state. Of course, this is dependent on a little care for the ball. It needs to be kept dark, cool and dry.
There is a need for preservation of the compounds we love. Coupled with the competition that will enter the market when global import and export becomes real, it leads me to believe that the smart concentrate makers are going to focus more and more on dry sieving and ice water techniques to produce their concentrates. Not only does it solve many packaging problems that we have, it’s an overall better product for shelf life than anything modern cannabis tech has come up with to date. Also, the processing techniques require far less machinery and intense scientific knowledge to operate. This means the investment in hash making goes towards artisan makers and people rather than industrial processes.
The real challenge here as usual is the storytelling and branding and education on the consumer side that lets people know why traditional hash is better on a shelf than almost any other product. As per usual, most people in America just don’t know. It’s not our fault, people spend lot’s of money teaching us the wrong things. We don’t even have a really good grasp of our place in the timeline of cannabis. Nor do we have any understanding of the global cannabis trade especially as it relates to history and where we are in time.
There is so much to teach, and so much misinformation, so many fads… It seems like everyday there’s a new way to consume or misrepresent cannabis that degrades the nature of the plant and the medicine it provides.
A simple solution to start moving in the right direction is to change the color of the jar you use to package your weed and tell your customer why. This will spark a cultural interest that will make change much like the craft beer and wine movements impacted the alcohol industry.
As always, thanks for reading, and I hope you get inspired to get out there and Stir the Pot.
Jesse Barney
January 3, 2020